 |
|
|
|
T h e...N A T I O N A L...D R A M A...A N D...T H E A T R E...S E L E C T I O N |
 |
Sterijino Pozorje Festival |
|
Novi Sad |
|
May 26th - June 5th 2008 |
|
|
P
H
O
T
O
A
L
B
U
M |
|
 |
|
|
|
TUESDAY - JUNE 3rd 2008 |
Grand Stage, Serbian National Theatre
|
|
19:30 & 22:00 |
|
|
Mirza Fehimović
ĆEIF
Belgrade Drama Theatre, Belgrade |
|
|
|
|
Adaptation, Direction and Set design
EGON SAVIN
Costume design SNEŽANA PEŠIĆ-RAJIĆ
Stage sound design ZORAN JERKOVIĆ
Stage speech LjILjANA MRKIĆ-POPOVIĆ
Premiere:
October 31st 2007 |
|
|
|
|
Salko Halilović |
LjUBOMIR BANDOVIĆ |
|
Esma Halilović |
DUŠANKA STOJANOVIĆ |
|
Munevera Petrović |
RADMILA TOMOVIĆ |
|
Stevan Petrović |
NEBOJŠA LjUBIŠIĆ |
Klara Horvat |
SANDRA BUGARSKI |
Hamo Mutevelić |
SLOBODAN ĆUSTIĆ |
Mirko Petrović |
LAKO NIKOLIĆ |
Mejra Halilović |
ANA SAKIĆ |
Elizabet Petrović |
JOVANA CVETKOVIĆ |
|
|
|
|
| The BELGRADE DRAMA THEATRE |
|
|
|
| The Belgrade Drama Theatre has existed for more than fifty years and the re-examination of the objectives and purpose of its work still continues. Founded back in 1947 under the name of the City Theatre, it had its first performance on 20th February 1948 with the play ‘The Youth of Fathers’ directed by Petar S. Petrović, after the text by Boris Gorbatov. Back in the 1950s the theatre had political moments of the contemporary art development in its mind. What was needed then was finding an alternative to academism and conservatism fostered by the leading theatres in Yugoslavia. The new theatre facilitated the introduction of new trends set by the leading stages of the world and encouraged translations of contemporary dramatic repertoire, but it also worked on establishing a new theatrical language. The Belgrade Drama Theatre became an example; it enjoyed the audiences’ appreciation and financial support of the state. After the ‘golden era’ marked by the performances made after the texts by American and European contemporary dramatists, the theatre encountered a period of crises, interrupted by an occasional success; but the theatre also went astray from time to time, being disoriented in regard to the epoch as well as its primary aims. Today the Belgrade Drama Theatre’s ambition is to enable authors and actors to develop a contemporary theatrical repertoire on its stages. The increasing number of productions and frequent guest performances ensure that new dramas can be seen by wide audiences. There have been years when only two shows were performed a week, as well as seasons when the theatre would produce only one premiere. Today, however, the shows are performed on two stages, seven days a week, while the ensemble regularly takes its performances to other Serbian and international stages. |
|
|
P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
... a touching, humorous and dry drama about our people’s returning to the places they fled from
The drama Ćeif was the winner at the competition for contemporary domestic drama in Bosnian and Serbian, which was opened by the MESS Festival and Belgrade Drama Theatre. It is a realistic piece about returnees to Sarajevo after the war – those who moved to safety, ran away, and those who stayed. The memories of the ex-Yugoslav happy times before the war; nostalgia and wondering about the reasons for the shared misery; the reproaches, guilt and the fear that they would not be understood; and finally – the possibility of forgiveness, of healing – all is blended convincingly and sincerely through small, personal stories – about families, neighbours, city rumours. The play delicately breaks down Bosnian trauma through several interwoven destinies, purely and conciliatorily – condemning no nation, because they all are victims of the same painful experience, each in its own predestined way. |
|
|
|
S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
|
|
|
|
A minimalist ground plan of a flat that looks like a destroyed and then cleared up scale model, and a perceptible picture of absence created by a dozen empty chairs and a lonely woman praying - this is the initial tone, more impressive than mere ambience, that Egon Savin intended for the drama written by Mirza Fehimovic. This obviously derelict emptiness is where – guided by the course of Fehimovic’s family-neighbour drama dealing with the subject of the (post)war trauma in Sarajevo – its characters step in; the ones who have stayed here, in the war, and those who left because of it, to reunite and gather their wits and recapitulate, to deal with the past by returning to it or to purge their own souls – as much as granted to each of them and as much as they can take from what is left. In one isolated moment of this play, phenomenally articulated both in the sense of direction and interpretation, Esma says: ‘Don’t apologize but join in - that helps.’ That is exactly how the realistic factuality of this exciting play of veristic local tones is joined by, for the chosen idiom atypical, stage figure-shortcuts, ranging from the wonderfully effective puppet-setting of the children’s characters to expertly staged theatrical silences and gestural voids. These elements provide the setting for multiply-split humanity and hurtfulness of the characters in this Fehimovic’s drama, blooming with motifs, to unfailingly gather around their initially lost axle. Not only around ‘a place as a sign’ and individual development positions of the characters, but around a potently composed image of the sentiment that human care is unavoidable just like mutuality in which the unsaid speaks as much as words do, as sometimes is appropriate to theatre. Surely, it is only when in a small space, we find, gathered together in an appropriate embrace, an eloquent text, the director who sovereignly feels that he knows – thus knowing that he feels, and actors who transform their theatrical task actively and expressively, an exquisite artistic accomplishment is possible. That is what Ljubomir Bandovic, Dusanka Stojanovic, Radmila Tomovic, Nebojsa Ljubisic, Sandra Bugarski, Slobodan Custic, Lako Nikolic, Ana Sakic and Jovana Cvetkovic achieved this time.
Vladimir KOPICL |
|
|
|
A
U
T
H
O
R |
|
 |
M
I
R
Z
A
F
E
H
I
M
O
V
I
Ć |
|
|
MIRZA FEHIMOVIĆ
Born in 1955 in Sarajevo, Mirza Fehimović graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in his hometown. He spent two years in India on a scholarship. He has published several books: Ars Brevis Vita Longa (1985) and Šta mi je rekao Franc (What Franc Told Me), Zec i pantaruo (award for the best book of unpublished stories in 2005). |
|
|
D
I
R
E
C
T
O
R |
|
 |
E
G
O
N
S
A
V
I
N |
|
|
EGON SAVIN
Professor of Directing at Faculty Of Drama Arts in Belgrade and Faculty Of Drama arts in Cetinje (Montenegro). He has directed in almost all major theatres of former yugoslavia, and his productions toured Nancy, Paris, Warszaw, Tel Aviv, Vienna, New York... He received a series of awards for his direction of works of local and international authors, several Steria award and «Bojan Stupica» Award.
He successfully worked with all production models in existance in these regions: from the production of Farewell Judas that assembled a group of conspirative young artists in mid-seventies who formed one of the possible models of theatrical off-scene, to productions at institutions of national significance – National Theatre in Belgrade, Serbian National Theatre in Novi Sad, Montenegrin National Theatre in Podgorica, Macedonian National Theatre.
He successfully Staged works of local and international classics in which he finds concrete clues that reveal the essential power of theatre in our times, linking both the plays and their authors to the concrete space and time in which the production is created, avoiding the realm of daily politics, political vulgarisation and the banal.
Ćeif is the fourth production directed by Egon Savin for the Belgrade Drama Theatre, where he has also signed Dugo putovanje u Jevropu (A Long Journey to Europe) by Stevan Koprivica (1987), Novo je doba (It is a New Era) by Siniša Kovačević (1991) and Kaj sad? (What Now) by Borivoje Radaković (2003). |
|
|
|
|
We are all actors and spectators of comedies and dramas imposed on us by life in Serbia
Ćeif re-examines the phenomenon of ‘politicising our personal lives’. It is a drama about returnees, war refugees who come back to Sarajevo after the war. Driven by nostalgia and a cruel refugee fate in London, they come to ‘regain’ their flats and continue their lives in their hometown. But they reveal that the prejudices of the warring parties still persist and they are becoming stronger and more passionate over time. Hatred is indestructible. Dividing people into those who left and those who stayed during the occupation is today translated into dividing people into traitors and patriots. One cannot exist without the other - they provide each other with a reason to be. The division has reached such dimensions, in public as well as in private spheres, that it’s not only the ‘traitors’ who are in the dark, while the ‘patriots’ are in the light. There are also we who have been proud to be ‘traitors’ for a long time, even though we are ‘patriots’. Ćeif is a play that seeks pure theatre. It abounds in the spirit and emotionality of a genuine play.
(...) Whatever theatre is like, true theatre affirms humanism and tries to save an individual lost in social turbulences. Each drama reflects upon a human passion or misery. The 20th century proved that individual fates are inseparably tied to the fate of certain social ferments. One could not define what Serbian theatre is today …
Egon SAVIN (Politika, 8th January 2008)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Our Little Story
(...) Instead of being burdened by the significance of the topic, the play by Mirza Fehimović seeks to simply and clearly analyse the factual state of affairs, to more or less depict how it used to be and what is happening now. His story of post-war Sarajevo is closest to an episode of a sitcom serial which places effective and witty dialogues with a postponed effect in the foreground. The heroine, Esma, is a woman from Sarajevo whose life is shattered into pieces and who has to cope with - besides her crippled husband who is incapable to live and earn a living, violent deaths during the war, and poverty - her sister who took refuge in London and is married to a Serb (once beaten up in Sarajevo under the accusation that he was guiding gunners from the nearby hills). Egon Savin packs this realistic story into an effective play about the war and its consequences, relaxing it with the use of puppets in the role of children, the innocent witnesses and participants, whose animators, actors, are on the stage as well.
(...) The fact that Ćeif is a little story about great suffering, that its authors don’t have a desire to change the world but rather to ‘humbly’ put emphasis on the human suffering, perhaps gives us hope that the times of great stories is over, and that the representatives of the people will not be able to repeat their and our story again.
Željko JOVANOVIĆ (Blic, 29th October
2007)
No Messing Around
(...) Egon Savin, himself a native of Sarajevo, in the encirclement made of a number of empty chairs echoing those who will never sit on them again, before the erased eyes of the children (faceless puppets in the play, led by actors), develops a memory of Munevera’s (Radmila Tomović) return to Sarajevo, several years after the latest war. Her sister Esma (Dušanka Stojanović), who has found refuge in zealous faith in an attempt to keep her sanity, welcomes her with joy and tears in her eyes. Munevera is married to a Serb, Stevan Petrović (Nebojša Ljubišić), who she no longer lives with in London.
In the presence of the witnesses and participants of events that should be forgotten (Slobodan Ćustić and Sandra Bugarski), the family tries to relive the Amarcord of the time when people lived naturally and logically. Clearly they fail, and a Romanian girl from London, as a symbol of something new, outside of the snake skein we live in, becomes a spark of the first honest, old-fashioned emotion, and some sort of sobering up.
Egon Savin has translated this nostalgic, neorealist story into some peculiar theatrical past tense. A spectator cannot help feeling that the kind of communication one sees on the stage, tense and staccato as it is, is over with. Hopefully, there comes a time when the truth will hurt more than a lie. And the spectator is afraid of it, too. With the delicate means he usually uses to construct his plays, Savin successfully makes everyone, from both sides of the fence, be ashamed all the time: Esma for offending her sister, Munevera for having left, Salko for being unable to stand up to Esma’s bitterness and for being too reasonable, Stevan for living in London, while his heart lies on the other side… And the spectators for just watching instead of participating.
Dragana BOŠKOVIĆ (Danas, 7th November 2007)
The Horror of the War Traumas
(...) With reduced means of expression, subtly, the actors present the deep tragedy and suffering of the victims of the ruthless political conflict, where all are losers, those who have left the same as those who have stayed. Ljubomir Bandović remarkably authentically shapes his character of a war invalid, Salko Halilović, who has miraculously preserved his high spirits, who is curious and self-ironical. Dušanka Stojanović plays his tired and sensitive wife Esma, who has found consolation in religion and constant prayers.
Nebojša Ljubišić plays the role of Stevan Petrović, who comes back from London, where he went with his family several months after the war started. His disappointment, bitterness and resignation are most pronounced, perhaps as the result of the scope of his comprehension, i.e. the fact that he has experienced life on the other side, which somehow appears as more lonesome and scarier. Radmila Tomović plays Stevan’s wife and Esma’s sister Munevera, who is at the same time happy to be back and saddened by the bleak reality of confrontation with the abandoned home and the friends left behind…None of the characters is spared from the consequences of the collective horrors brought upon by political conflicts, and each one of them, slightly reminiscent of Chekhov, live some ugly replicas of life, but still keep up the hope, persistence and will for survival.
The three characters of children are presented by puppets, led by older actors (Lako Nikolić, Ana Sakić, Jovana Cvetković). This directing method is remarkable for its immanent metaphoric feature, which is theatrically effective and can be understood as an embodiment of the idea that the innocence, fragility and honesty of children is rendered impossible by a reality permeated with an omnipresent hatred and destruction which lies in the core of the play. Egon Savin’s play is characterised by pronounced, pregnant, unsettling silences, occasionally broken by somewhat eerie street noises, underscoring how unbearable this apparent tranquillity is. Deep on the mostly barren stage, there are some empty chairs which constantly, very unobtrusively yet suggestively, imply the frightening absence of a number of people, unceasingly reminding us of the horrible suffering. The subtlety of expression, the lack of predictability and descriptiveness, the emphasise placed on metaphorical and associative stage signs are the distinctions which make Ceif artistically valuable in its pictorial analysis of our post-traumatic reality, where everyone is helplessly caught in some time loop, a vacuum where there is no life, only a reflection of life; but also a desperate and awesome urge to survive, in spite everything.
Ana TASIĆ (Politika, 3rd November 2007) |
|
|
|
.The
management preserves the right to change
the schedule
|
Copyright
: Sterijino pozorje 1998-2008.
|
|
|
|
|
|
